filled by the depoliticised, anodyne Kingston Trio. Their clean-cut collegiate version of the hootenanny defined the mass perception of ‘folk music’ until the liberal but
wholesome Peter, Paul & Mary enabled Bob Dylan to infiltrate the pop mainstream via the side entrance by peeling the husk and bark off Dylan songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’
and ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’, rendering them AM-radio-friendly in a way that their composer never could. The next thing you knew, there was an entire sub-industry
called ‘folk-rock’. Purism never stood a chance.
‘Folk-rock’ of the white variety essentially consisted of two wings and a centre. On its nominal left, there was an attachment to traditional instrumentation
(acoustic guitar, particularly the exotic and resonant twelve-string beloved of Leadbelly and Blind Willie McTell, banjo and mandolin) and melodies as settings for radical new lyrics; on its new
right, a blend of actual traditional and original neo-trad material performed with the instrumentation of the post-Beatles rock band. Byrds founder Jim (later Roger) McGuinn virtually invented that
new centre by flitting from one wing to the other. Armed with an impeccably traditional 12-string acoustic guitar, he initially livened up his folk-club appearances by injecting Beatles songs into
the standard hootenanny repertoire; later, he and his Byrds colleagues, including David Crosby, sweetened the new electric Dylan just as Peter, Paul & Mary had softened his earlier, acoustic
incarnation. In other words: folk-rock was a juggling act involving new wine (post-Dylan singer-songwriterisms) in old bottles (trad instrumentation and melodies) and old wine (folkloric materials)
in new bottles (electric guitars, drum kits, serious amplification). By contrast, the Rolling Stones – the matchmaking middlemen who made by far the most profound contributions to the rapprochement between electric blues and ’60s rock – were themselves self-identified blues purists. As far as they were concerned, they weren’t softening the music at all:
they were playing it just as authentically and sincerely as they knew how to do. However, since they happened to be ugly-cute lower-middle-class English boys who sounded exactly like who they were
despite their best efforts to the contrary, they ended up sweetening it anyway.
The Stones’ eclectic repertoire included material borrowed from soul contemporaries like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Marvin Gaye, which was displayed alongside their trademarked blues
items gleaned from Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed or Muddy Waters. However, even their more modern songs were performed in a style derived from their primary source: Chess Records from the ’50s,
completewith harmonica and slide-guitar riffs assiduously learned from Muddy Waters’ records; prominent maracas and judderingly reverbed rhythm guitar on loan
(metaphorically, at least) from Bo Diddley; plus, of course, the Chuck Berry guitar licks that inspired Keith Richards to take the first steps on the path which ultimately led him to formulate one
of the most idiosyncratic guitar stylings in all of rock. In this context, the application of the ‘folk’ tag to Chicago blues provided an index of the extent to which perception of the
music had shifted since its commercial heyday in the 1950s. To academics and purists who considered acoustic rural blues the only acceptably authentic form of the music, the likes of Waters, Wolf
and Hooker were apostates selling a noisy, commercialised dilution of the pure milk (or maybe that should be ‘a watering-down of the pure whiskey’) of the blues. The notion that
‘Chicago blues’ – the rumbustious, clamorous soundtrack of the urban world of Delta migrants transplanted to the big cities – had cultural value equivalent to that of the
downhome rural forms was an entirely new one, and not entirely unfree from controversy. In Britain, harmonicist Cyril Davies
wholesome Peter, Paul & Mary enabled Bob Dylan to infiltrate the pop mainstream via the side entrance by peeling the husk and bark off Dylan songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’
and ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right’, rendering them AM-radio-friendly in a way that their composer never could. The next thing you knew, there was an entire sub-industry
called ‘folk-rock’. Purism never stood a chance.
‘Folk-rock’ of the white variety essentially consisted of two wings and a centre. On its nominal left, there was an attachment to traditional instrumentation
(acoustic guitar, particularly the exotic and resonant twelve-string beloved of Leadbelly and Blind Willie McTell, banjo and mandolin) and melodies as settings for radical new lyrics; on its new
right, a blend of actual traditional and original neo-trad material performed with the instrumentation of the post-Beatles rock band. Byrds founder Jim (later Roger) McGuinn virtually invented that
new centre by flitting from one wing to the other. Armed with an impeccably traditional 12-string acoustic guitar, he initially livened up his folk-club appearances by injecting Beatles songs into
the standard hootenanny repertoire; later, he and his Byrds colleagues, including David Crosby, sweetened the new electric Dylan just as Peter, Paul & Mary had softened his earlier, acoustic
incarnation. In other words: folk-rock was a juggling act involving new wine (post-Dylan singer-songwriterisms) in old bottles (trad instrumentation and melodies) and old wine (folkloric materials)
in new bottles (electric guitars, drum kits, serious amplification). By contrast, the Rolling Stones – the matchmaking middlemen who made by far the most profound contributions to the rapprochement between electric blues and ’60s rock – were themselves self-identified blues purists. As far as they were concerned, they weren’t softening the music at all:
they were playing it just as authentically and sincerely as they knew how to do. However, since they happened to be ugly-cute lower-middle-class English boys who sounded exactly like who they were
despite their best efforts to the contrary, they ended up sweetening it anyway.
The Stones’ eclectic repertoire included material borrowed from soul contemporaries like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Marvin Gaye, which was displayed alongside their trademarked blues
items gleaned from Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed or Muddy Waters. However, even their more modern songs were performed in a style derived from their primary source: Chess Records from the ’50s,
completewith harmonica and slide-guitar riffs assiduously learned from Muddy Waters’ records; prominent maracas and judderingly reverbed rhythm guitar on loan
(metaphorically, at least) from Bo Diddley; plus, of course, the Chuck Berry guitar licks that inspired Keith Richards to take the first steps on the path which ultimately led him to formulate one
of the most idiosyncratic guitar stylings in all of rock. In this context, the application of the ‘folk’ tag to Chicago blues provided an index of the extent to which perception of the
music had shifted since its commercial heyday in the 1950s. To academics and purists who considered acoustic rural blues the only acceptably authentic form of the music, the likes of Waters, Wolf
and Hooker were apostates selling a noisy, commercialised dilution of the pure milk (or maybe that should be ‘a watering-down of the pure whiskey’) of the blues. The notion that
‘Chicago blues’ – the rumbustious, clamorous soundtrack of the urban world of Delta migrants transplanted to the big cities – had cultural value equivalent to that of the
downhome rural forms was an entirely new one, and not entirely unfree from controversy. In Britain, harmonicist Cyril Davies
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